Hello everyone,
This is my first “official” questions to you all (I am not counting the self-introduction I posted), so first of all I’d like to say hi and thanks for letting me be part of this online community.
A couple of days ago I received a gorgeous churchwarden pipe I bought on eBay; it’s classy and yet has a rough quality that I love. As it often happens with eBay purchases, despite the fact that I checked before buying it and there was no mention to mortise/tenon problems in its description, it has a loose tenon.
Now, I’ve been through this before and at that time I did my homework: I checked on You Tube, the place I always went to for pipe-related matters before joining this forum. Its advantage? You see what those guys are doing.
Basically I learnt that there seems to be only one way to deal with this: to warm up the tenon with either a) hot water, or b) a lighter, and then 1) push it against a table or 2) introduce the little poker of the 3-in-1 cleaning tool, or a screwdriver, inside it, to stretch it.
I tried both methods on two different pipes. When I used the a-1 technique the hot water touched the tip of the shank and produced a discoloration that’s still there. When I used a-2, I stretched the tenon too much and thus got myself another problem to solve.
The question is, does anybody have any idea or alternative technique to suggest? Or should I simply wait? I’ve heard that when you start smoking a pipe after a long time (this one was an estate pipe) the briar swells, expands, and that gets rid of this kind of problem; but it might be a pipe smokers’ urban legend ;-)
Thanks in advance.
Oudis
Post Scriptum: Why can’t I see my avatar next to my messages when I uploaded one?
This is my first “official” questions to you all (I am not counting the self-introduction I posted), so first of all I’d like to say hi and thanks for letting me be part of this online community.
A couple of days ago I received a gorgeous churchwarden pipe I bought on eBay; it’s classy and yet has a rough quality that I love. As it often happens with eBay purchases, despite the fact that I checked before buying it and there was no mention to mortise/tenon problems in its description, it has a loose tenon.
Now, I’ve been through this before and at that time I did my homework: I checked on You Tube, the place I always went to for pipe-related matters before joining this forum. Its advantage? You see what those guys are doing.
Basically I learnt that there seems to be only one way to deal with this: to warm up the tenon with either a) hot water, or b) a lighter, and then 1) push it against a table or 2) introduce the little poker of the 3-in-1 cleaning tool, or a screwdriver, inside it, to stretch it.
I tried both methods on two different pipes. When I used the a-1 technique the hot water touched the tip of the shank and produced a discoloration that’s still there. When I used a-2, I stretched the tenon too much and thus got myself another problem to solve.
The question is, does anybody have any idea or alternative technique to suggest? Or should I simply wait? I’ve heard that when you start smoking a pipe after a long time (this one was an estate pipe) the briar swells, expands, and that gets rid of this kind of problem; but it might be a pipe smokers’ urban legend ;-)
Thanks in advance.
Oudis
Post Scriptum: Why can’t I see my avatar next to my messages when I uploaded one?
